Juba gasped, and he spun to look down the road back toward camp, toward the war.
The battle had begun. The legions would already be marching, strung out across the valley.
Juba ran toward his horse, hastily shoving the useless spear back into its bag and once more pulling free the Trident.
He spurred the horse into speed even as he pulled himself into the saddle. He’d been a fool. They all had. He knew where the Lance of Olyndicus was now.
He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
12
THE BATTLE OF VELLICA
CANTABRIA, 26 BCE
As the sun rose behind her tent, Selene looked out to the west. The two praetorians who were waiting for her looked expectant, but for several heartbeats she could do nothing but stare at the emptiness of the camp around her. The legionnaires were already on the move. Few had been left behind, it seemed, as the men formed up for the attack on Vellica. And though she could not see them, she had no doubt that atop the high hill across the valley, the men of Vellica were readying their weapons, too, preparing for the coming assault.
Many men would die today. Hundreds, she was certain. Perhaps far more if the Romans actually succeeded in breaching the gates.
So many lives would be lost.
But not the one she wanted.
Augustus had called Juba into a private meeting for some hours before the dawn. Afterward, her husband had sent her a message before he rode out of the camp alone, headed south along the road. The message was short, and it was unspecific—as all their communications had to be, in case they were intercepted by Caesar’s men. But hidden in its brief lines was enough to know that he had both the Trident and the Lance in his possession, and that he would return soon. There was great hope that they might have vengeance on the man who’d taken her family from her.
Yet now two praetorian guards had come, requesting her presence at Caesar’s side.
“The emperor was most insistent, Lady Selene,” the one nearest to her said.
Though hearing Octavian’s title made her stomach turn, Selene turned her eyes from the empty camp and smiled at the man. “Of course. I would certainly not dare to keep him waiting. If you’ll just give me a moment.”
Before they could object, Selene ducked her head back into the tent.
In the semi-darkness, she tried to calm her fearful heart. Why would Octavian summon her? Had Juba’s mission been some kind of test through which Octavian had discovered their betrayal?
Her gaze darted around the room, not even sure what she was looking for as the yawning sense of panic swelled up within her.
And then she saw it: Juba’s locked chest. The one with the false bottom under which he’d long hidden the Aegis of Zeus, beside which she had placed the Palladium.
Not two minutes later she was emerging from the tent with a slightly more formal dress—more appropriate, she explained to the praetorians, for meeting the son of the god they’d made Julius Caesar to be. What that dress held beneath its elaborate folds—clutched close like the treasure that it was, like the salvation it might be—she did not say.
* * *
The emperor of Rome was not far from the palisades of the Roman camp. The general staff—perhaps a dozen of the highest-ranking men in the army, along with the signalmen—were gathered on the ridge of the wooded hillside, from which they had a clear view of the open valley below and the hillfort of Vellica beyond. Augustus, Tiberius, and the three generals who commanded the individual legions of the army were on horseback. The other men stood around them in their battle finery, straight-backed and stone-faced.
Corocotta was nowhere to be seen, though a cart had been drawn up behind the general staff that was laden with boxes: the reward, Selene suspected, for Corocotta having turned himself in.
Juba was also nowhere to be seen.
The praetorians led her to the edge of the gathered staff, bowed, and then pulled away to stand apart, with four others of Caesar’s guards, closer to the palisade behind them. Selene waited until Octavian noticed her, and then she gave a small bow, keeping her arms tight to her body so that the artifact she had hidden there wouldn’t show.
“Lady Selene,” Octavian said, “it is good of you to join us.”
“You sent for me,” she replied.
“So I did.” Octavian smiled as if he were her father, rather than the man who’d led her father to fall on his own sword.
“I cannot think that I will be of much use to you here,” Selene said. She motioned to Carisius and the other Roman field commanders. “I know little of the arts of war.”
Tiberius shifted atop his mount beside Caesar. “Few women do,” he said.
“It is only too true,” Selene said, as graciously as she could manage. Tiberius, she saw, was staring fiercely at the valley below, as if he was determined not to look at her. Did he truly hate her so?
“So it is,” Octavian agreed. “But only because they are not trained for it. Perhaps that is for the best. War is blood and death. I have learned this. The fewer who see it the better.”
Blood and death, Selene thought, is all you have brought to the world. “As you say,” she said.
“Columns moving, Caesar,” Carisius said.
Selene turned toward the valley, following the intense stare of Carisius and the other generals. Where the hill rounded into the plain of the valley, the woods thinned and stopped. The three legions were appearing there, like glittering snakes forming out of the wooded dark. The men marched six abreast, in three columns that were hundreds and hundreds of rows in length, and she could hear now the steady thump of their feet upon the earth. At the heads of the columns the standards of each legion were held high in the air: banners crisp and bright, and the golden eagles atop them flashing in the first rays of dawn. In their discipline and in their display, she thought, the Roman army was truly a beautiful and powerful sight.
“I didn’t call you here to speak of war,” Octavian said. “I wanted to talk to you about your mother.”
Selene’s head whipped around. “My … mother?”
Octavian was calmly looking back and forth between her and the advancing army below. “Cleopatra,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about Alexandria and what happened there.”
Selene stared, feeling an instinctive heat rising in her chest. For a moment she had the urge to reach for the Palladium, but what then? What could she do with it? Blow down his own banners? Knock him from his horse? Now that she thought about it, she realized how foolish she had been to grab the Shard. It was desperation. It was panic. It was emotion. It was everything her mother had taught her not to be.
“My mother is dead,” she said. Speaking the words made her rage flash and then fade. What good were the lessons of a woman who’d lost?
But what use was the Shard in her dress?
Octavian had been looking to the columns, and when he turned his gaze back to her it was once more a look of pity. “She is,” he said. “And it’s important to me that you know that I did not want her to die. But she made that choice, Selene. I was not pleased when she took her own life. Why do you think she did so?”
“Because she loved my father,” Selene said, voice flat.
“Caesar’s your father, Selene,” Tiberius said.
Octavian raised his hand. “By adoption,” he corrected. “And I would be a fool if I did not recognize that there is a difference. You yourself know this well, my son.”
The darkness grew upon the face of Tiberius, and still he stared straight ahead at the marching men.
“Your mother loved Antony,” Octavian said.
“She did.”
“She wanted to join him in death.”
“She did.”